Hump or Bump?

One street east of me has speed humps and bright yellow warning signs screaming “SPEED HUMP AHEAD” and then, right at the hump, “SPEED HUMP” in full all-caps, like the signs are yelling because they really want you to slow down. The next street over bubbles with speed bumps, starting with a polite “SPEED BUMP AHEAD” warning, then just a humble “BUMP” at the actual bump — still ALL CAPS, still yelling, but somehow it feels… less aggressive. Then the following street flips back to the aggressive hump signs again. So you’ve got, in order: shouty hump, shouty bump, shouty hump. We took photographic evidence while walking dogs.

One day, distracted by Boston’s More Than a Feeling on the radio, badly singing the lyric “I see my Marianne walking away”, I mistakenly turned onto the bump street on my way home. Except right at the entrance, there was a hump sign — and I swear the universe cracked. “Son of a bitch,” I muttered. The street should say BUMP, not HUMP. Reality was glitching. I parked in front of someone’s house, a tad paranoid for doing that, and glanced at the street sign in the mirrors. Yep. The bump street. One rogue hump sign standing guard at the southern entrance like a rebel. Violation.

I drove the length of the street, creepy slow, rechecking every sign. All BUMPS. Except the imposter HUMP. Then I wondered if northbound versus southbound had more sign drama. How deep does this hump-bump rabbit hole go? Different crews? A signage dictator? City pranksters? Surely there’s a full mystery novel here. I could investigate, obsessively dig for answers, but on a scale of one to ten, how important is this? Maybe a one. But for my ADHD brain? An eight. It itched bad.

Then it hit me — like my dog learning “leave it” in front of a moldy pizza slice — sometimes you just gotta walk away. So I did.